Free The Toynbee Convector by Ray Bradbury Page B

Doug, ain’t it?” He jabbed my ribs.
    “It’s a whooperdoo, all right,” I said, jabbing him back, giggling. “Wish I had an atom bomb! Blooie, there goes the school!”
    “Bam! Goodbye Clara Holmquist!”
    “Bang! There goes Officer O’Rourkel”
    * * *
    For supper there were Swedish meatballs* hot buns, Boston beans and green salad. Father looked very serious and strange and tried to bring up some important scientific facts he had read in a magazine, but Mom shook her head.
    I watched Fop. “You feeling okay, Pop?”
    “I’m going to cancel our paper subscription,” said Mom. “You’re worrying yourself right into ulcers. You hear me, Dad?”
    “Boy,” I said, “did I see film ! The atom bomb blew up a whole battleship down at the Elite.”
    Father dropped his fork and stared at me. “Sometimes, Douglas, you have the uncanny ability to say just the wrong thing at the wrong time.”
    I saw Mother squinting at me to catch my eye. “It’s late,” she said. “You’d better run on to the circus.”
    As I was getting my hat and coat I heard Father say in a low and thoughtful voice, “How would it be to sell the business? You know, we’ve always wanted to travel; go to Mexico maybe. A small town. Settle down.”
    “You’re talking like a child,” whispered Mother. “I won’t hear you carry on this way.”

“I know it’s foolish. Don’t mind me. But you’re right; better cancel the paper.”
    A wind was blowing the trees half over and the stars were all out and the circus lay in the country hills, in the meadow, like a big toadstool. Red Tongue and I had popcorn in one hand, taffy in the other, and cotton candy on our chins. “Lookit my beard!” Red Tongue shouted. Everybody was talking and pushing under the bright light bulbs and a man smacked a canvas with a bamboo cane and shouted about The Skeleton, The Blubber Lady, The Illustrated Man, The Seal Boy, while RT and I jostled through to the lady who tore our tickets in half.
    We balanced our way up to sit on the slat seats just when the bass drums exploded and the jeweled elephants lumbered out, and from then on there were hot searchlights, men shooting from fiery howitzers, ladies hung by their white teeth imitating butterflies high up in the clouds of cigarette smoke while trapeze men rode back and forth among the ropes and poles, and lions trotted softly around the sawdust-floored cage while the trainer in white pants shot smoke and flame at them from a silver pistol. “Look!” RT and I cried, blinking here, gaping there, chuckling, oohing , aahing , amazed, incredulous, surprised, and entertained, out of breath, eyes wide, mouths open. Chariots roared around the track, clowns jumped from burning hotels, grew hair, changed from giants to midgets in a steam box. The band crashed and tooted and hooted and everywhere was color and warmth and sequins shining and the crowd thundering.
    But along about the end of the show I looked up. And there, behind me, was a little hole in the canvas. And through that hole I could see the old meadowland, the wind blowing over it and the stars shining alone out there. The cold wind tugged at the tent very gently. And all of a sudden, turning back to the warm riot all around me, I was cold too. I heard Red Tongue laughing beside me and I half-saw some men riding a silver bike on a high, far-away, thin thread, the snare drum going tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat, everyone quiet. And when that was over, there were two hundred clowns whacking each other’s heads with bats and Red Tongue almost fell from his seat, screaming with it. I sat there and didn’t move and at last Red Tongue turned and looked at me and said, “Hey, what’s wrong, Doug?”
    “Nothing,” I said. I shook myself. I looked up at the red circus poles and the rope lines and the flaring lights. I looked at the zinc-oxide clowns and made myself laugh. “Lookit there, RT, that fat one over there!”
    The band played “The Old Gray Mare She